Outage leaves over 10,000 islanders without internet and phone access

A major outage has left over 10,000 islanders without internet and phone access.

Openreach revealed on Saturday that customers in the Faroe, Shetland, and Orkney islands could face disruption to their broadband services.

The company said that it is the result of damage to a subsea cable from Orkney to Banff, on Saturday morning.

It’s understood that it was a Shefa-2 cable that was affected, which is part of the cables owned by Faroese Telecom.

Engineers are working on the issue and will provide a timescale for a full repair in due course.

999 calls are not impacted.

An Openreach spokesperson said: “We sincerely apologise for any inconvenience, the damage to a subsea cable from Orkney to Banff, has caused from Saturday morning.

“Customers can still make landline calls, and whilst we’re constantly assessing customer impact, we believe upto 10,000 customers in Faroe, Shetland, and Orkney islands could have disruption to their broadband services.

“We’re working on repairs as soon as we can and will update further once we can confirm our specific work and timeline. Anyone experiencing any issues should report it to their service provider for further investigation as usual.“

Police Scotland have been contacted for comment.